In the wake of violent protests in St. Louis following the acquittal of white former police officer Jason Stockley for the murder of black suspect Anthony Lamar Smith, a Cornell University doctoral candidate in philosophy has put forth an argument you’re unlikely to hear in the mainstream media. Writing at National Review Online, Philippe Lemoine marshals actual facts and logic to demonstrate that, contrary to received wisdom, black males in the United States do not suffer a disproportionate degree of police brutality.

The largely undisputed narrative about cops and black men goes like this: black males are victimized daily all over America by police harassment and brutality, even when innocent, and there is an epidemic of police shootings of unarmed black men. This narrative is false, says Lemoine, and “distracts from far more serious problems that black Americans face.” Furthermore, the news media acceptance of it “poisons the relations between law enforcement and black communities throughout the country and results in violent protests that destroy property and sometimes even claim lives.”

The reality, Lemoine declares, is that a random black male is “overwhelmingly unlikely” to be the victim of police violence, and any disparity that does exist between the violence blacks and whites experience in their encounter with cops “is consistent with the racial gap in violent crime, suggesting that the role of racial bias is small.”

According to the Washington Post, just 16 unarmed black men out of a population of more than 20 million were killed by the police in 2016 – down from 36 the year before. These figures are numerically comparable to the number of black men that could be struck by lightning in any given year, Lemoine calculates, and they include cases in which the shooting was justified, even if the person killed was unarmed.

“Police killings of black unarmed males are incredibly rare, and it’s completely misleading to talk about an ‘epidemic of them,” he writes, pointing out that the left makes a similar comparison “when they argue that it’s completely irrational to fear that you might become a victim of terrorism.”

It’s not even true that black men are beaten on a regular basis by the police, or even pulled over constantly without reason. Using data from the Police-Public Contact Survey, based on a nationally representative sample of more than 70,000 U.S. residents age 16 or older, Lemoine notes that “black men are less likely than white men to have contact with the police in any given year.” Only 1.5 percent of black men have more than three contacts with the police in any given year, he points out – only marginally more than the 1.2 percent of white men who do.

Actual injuries by the police are so rare that they cannot even be estimated precisely, says Lemoine. “The data suggest that only 0.08 percent of black men are injured by the police each year, approximately the same rate as for white men. A black man is about 44 times as likely to suffer a traffic-related injury.” Again, these figures include instances in which violence is legally justified.

There does exist a racial disparity in the police use of physical force, but this experience is rare for men of all races. Only 0.6 percent of black men experience physical force by the police in any given year, states Lemoine, compared to approximately 0.2 percent of white men. Granted, that is three times as often; however, this disparity is less likely to be the result of racial bias, as people commonly assume, than the fact that black men commit violent crimes at much higher rates than white men do.

Citing data from the National Crime Victimization Survey, Lemoine notes,

that black men are three times as likely to commit violent crimes as white men. To the extent that cops are more likely to use force against people who commit violent crimes, which they surely are, this could easily explain the disparities we have observed in the rates at which the police use force. That’s not to say that bias plays no role; I’m sure it does play one. But it’s unlikely to explain a very large part of the discrepancy.

As for black Americans’ own perceptions of how they are mistreated by the police, Lemoine points out that individuals can be trusted about their own personal experiences, but “when it comes to larger social phenomena,” other factors come into play besides just their personal experience – the media, for example, which is very influential in terms of perpetuating the false narrative about police brutality against blacks. For example, most Americans believe that crime in the U.S. has increased since the 1990s, despite an abundance of information that crime has actually fallen dramatically. “[I]f people of any color can be wrong about this,” reasons Lemoine, “there is no reason to think black people can’t be wrong about the prevalence of police violence against minorities.”

His clear-eyed argument echoes the similarly fact-based presentation of Heather Mac Donald’s recent, essential read, The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe. That sobering book warns that an “academic victimology industry” and a complicit media have stoked Black Lives Matter hatred of the police and propelled the current “anti-cop narrative to powerful mainstream status.”

Facts may be stubborn things, as John Adams said, but facts alone are not especially effective against a deeply entrenched, cultural narrative protected and promoted by forces such as the media. Smashing that false perception of an epidemic of police violence against black men will take a combination of the facts with an emotionally powerful counter-narrative – and enough minds that are receptive to truth.

Rioters wreak havoc after cop acquitted in killing of heroin dealer.

St. Louis was rocked Monday by a third consecutive night of riots organized and carried out by Black Lives Matter after a white cop was acquitted Friday of first-degree murder in the death of a notorious black criminal.

At time of writing, ABC News was reporting that “more than 160 people have now been now arrested, as police have been aggressively arresting more people to curb property destruction and police assaults.”

The virulently racist Black Lives Matter movement, which, along with its Antifa allies should be designated a terrorist organization, has long welcomed the deaths of blacks at the hands of law enforcement, treatment their passing as a profit center and recruitment opportunity. Supporters of the movement riot on cue nowadays to advance the cause, and loot stores, advancing social justice with each new flat-screen television they liberate from their oppressors. Strangely missing from the movement’s mission statement are its commitment to ramping up anti-police hysteria, and boosting minority resentment of white Americans whom they blame for more or less all problems in their personal lives and in the country.

The “mostly peaceful” protesters, as the mainstream media consistently describes left-wing rioters, took to the streets of the Missouri city Friday after former St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley, 36, a white man, was found not guilty of first-degree murder in the Dec. 20, 2011, shooting death of drug dealer Anthony Lamar Smith, 24, a black man, after a high-speed chase and crash. Stockley said he fired on Smith repeatedly in self-defense. At the time, Smith was on parole for convictions related to drug-trafficking, theft, and illegal gun possession. A bag of heroin was found in the car Smith was driving.

According to police, protests Friday started out peaceful but were “no longer peaceful” as of the next night. Over the weekend a minimum of 32 people were arrested for blocking highways, damaging property, throwing bricks at police and rocks and red paint at the house of the city’s mayor, Lyda Krewson, a left-wing Democrat who makes excuses for the rioters.

Krewson green-lighted further violence by saying she was “appalled” by what happened to dead heroin pusher Smith and is “sobered by this outcome.” The useful idiot added, “I will continue my work to create a more equitable community.” Members of the thousand-strong angry mob departed only after cops tear-gassed them.

John Sexton traced the march’s degeneration into mob violence over the course of Sunday. He noted the change in tone used by police on Twitter over a two-and-half hour period.

From @SLMPD at 7:27 p.m.: “The demonstrators have returned back to police headquarters on Olive where they continue their peaceful demonstration. #STLVerdict[.]”

At 8:06 p.m.: “Group near HQ throwing debris @ officers following a traffic stop. If group cannot be peaceful, they will be ordered to leave. #STLVerdict[.]”

And at 9:43 p.m.: “We have reports of significant property damage in Downtown #STL. Will update soon. #STLVerdict[.]”

It was “a repeat of the pattern we’ve seen over and over,” Sexton wrote. “A peaceful protest march that lasts through part of the day followed by a late-night turn to rioting and vandalism.”

Authorities vowed to act against lawbreakers.

“People setting out to do damage are being arrested and these criminals we’ve arrested should be held accountable and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” St. Louis Interim Police Chief Lawrence O’Toole said early Monday.

“We’re in control,” he said. “This is our city and we’re going to protect it.”

In a delightful, ironic role reversal, some police patrolling the city reportedly chanted the radical battle cry, “Whose streets? Our streets.”

Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens (R) won his post partly by slamming inept left-winger, then-Gov. Jay Nixon (D), for allowing the demonstrations following the Aug. 9, 2014, death of Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson to spiral out of control.

“I will protect people’s constitutional right to peacefully protest, but violence will not be tolerated,” said the governor, who activated the National Guard to deal with the left-wing mayhem. “We will protect people’s lives, homes, and communities.”

Stockley maintained his innocence and appealed for calm.

“I can feel for and I understand what the family is going through, and I know everyone wants someone to blame, but I’m just not the guy,” said Stockley, who left the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department in August 2013. Not long after, the weak-kneed members of the St. Louis police board threw away $900,000 of taxpayers’ money by settling a wrongful death lawsuit with Smith’s survivors.

Stockley waived his right to a jury trial. The trial judge, St. Louis Circuit Judge Timothy Wilson, found prosecutorsdid not meet their evidentiary burden for the first-degree murder charge or even for a lesser offense such as involuntary manslaughter because they failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Stockley’s “use of force was not justified in self-defense.”

Prosecutors claimed at the trial that got underway Aug. 1 that Stockley planted a revolver in Smith’s car to justify the shooting, but that gun did not appear in any of the video footage taken by multiple cameras at the scene of the incident.

The gun in question was too large, the judge found, for the accused to have hidden it from the various cameras. Nor did the prosecution adequately account for the wound Smith received as he sat inside the vehicle on the driver’s side at the time of death. Because the wound was on the lower left abdomen, it is possible Smith was reaching for something to his right, the judge determined.

The fact that Stockley’s, not Smith’s, DNA was found on the gun, doesn’t prove Smith failed to touch the gun, Wilson found. Besides, not too many drug pushers are unarmed.

“An urban heroin dealer not in possession of a firearm would be an anomaly,” the judge indicated.

Wilson rejected the government’s case, saying it was “not supported by the evidence.” “This court … is simply not firmly convinced of the defendant’s guilt,” Wilson wrote in a 30-page ruling. “Agonizingly, this court has (pored) over the evidence again and again.”

Authorities initially declined to pursue the case, but in May 2016 Stockley was charged with first-degree murder at a time when prosecutors were being pressured by the U.S. Department of Justice, then controlled by Democrats, to put the hurt on cops. The Democratic Party, through the DNC, has officially endorsed Black Lives Matter, whose members demand the murder of police officers and who claim police death squads wander the fruited plain in search of black victims.

President Barack Hussein Obama and both of his attorneys general, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, were perfectly content to sacrifice cops like Stockley on the altar of left-wing identity politics. They wanted payback not justice, which helps to explain why the Obama administration did not enforce civil rights laws when white Americans were the alleged victims.

The acquittal of Stockley gave Black Lives Matter license to riot and assault police. What began as a protest march erupted with a wild mob tearing through downtown St. Louis and through the city’s affluent areas. Protesters said they wanted whites to feel the pain.

Protesters burned American flags, damaged police cruisers and destroyed businesses. At least 10 officers were assaulted with bricks and bottles … The violence caused local businesses to cancel major venues. Protesters also temporarily shut down a major mall in St. Louis. They chanted, “You kill one of us, we kill your economy,” and they carried Black Lives Matter signs.

Black leaders don’t want peace, Peterson said. “They identify more with Black Lives Matter than they do with decent whites and police. They don’t want a solution; they want revenge against whites.”

Peters is correct.

“Revenge against whites” is one of the key animating principles of the American Left today.

And so when opportunities arise to make whites pay for wrongs supposedly done to blacks, the Left will continue to be there, throwing gasoline on the fire.

The international media is only interested in one side of the story in Myanmar. But there is another side.

“Malaysian IS members carrying out ‘holy war’ against Myanmar government,” Bernama, September 18, 2017:

MELAKA: A number of Malaysians backed by the Islamic State (IS) militant group is engaging the Myanmar government in a “holy war” purportedly to defend the oppressed Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State.

Federal police Special Branch’s Counter-Terrorism Division assistant director Datuk Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay said in reality, the IS is employing the Rohingya issue as a platform to recruit new members to carry out its terrorist acts.

Ayob said IS also shared images of oppressed Rohingya people online to evoke sympathy and lure people to be part of the terror group.

“At the same time, we have intelligence information on the possibility of Indonesians involved in militant activities in their country,” Ayob told reporters after the launch of the ‘IS Threat to Youths Awareness Seminar’ here yesterday….

Ayob said Myanmar’s proximity to Malaysia was an opportunity for IS to spread their influence in Rakhine.

“Myanmar is closer to Malaysia than Syria and the southern Philippines. And now Rakhine has become their latest destination to carry out their ‘jihad’.”

Ayob revealed on Sept 10, a cendol seller from here was arrested on suspicion of promoting IS militancy through the printing and distribution of IS flags. The 38-year old man was also planning to take part in IS activities in the Philippines and Rakhine….

He said as of now there were four Malaysians in Syria believed to be actively recruiting Malaysians.

The DNC is in complete meltdown as several major Democrats concurrently face charges relating to the sexual abuse of children, including at least 11 then-current and former mayors who have been accused of child sex abuse-related crimes since 2016. The allegations range from child porn to physical abuse. The alleged victims were as young as four years old. David Zublick and Ronnie McMullen of Life Change Tea expose the horrible truth in this special repor